A blog of my inner most thoughts on film and movies. Here, I will discuss great movies, diss bad ones and argue about movies in between. I will talk about movies new & old, stuff my generation loves (and why most of the time they are insane) and defend my DVD shelf to the death. Please enjoy and comment to your heart's desire. Thanks.
Twitter: @almostflmcritic

Thursday, July 27, 2017

The Emoji
Movie is about as funny, as unpredictable & as original as an episode of
Criminal Minds.

Gene
(Miller) is the only son of two “Meh” Emojis & it’s his turn to join the
family business: as the “Meh” Emoji in a teenager’s phone. But Gene doesn’t know if he feels right for
the job. After a terrible first shift,
head emoji Smiler (Rudolph) decides he needs deleted. On the run with fellow outcast Hi-5 (Corden),
Gene soon meets Jailbreak (Faris), who says she can make him who he is meant to
be. What will that be?

The basic
outline for The Emoji Movie is ripped right out of Wreck-It Ralph. The whole movie takes place inside the world
of a generic smartphone. The lack of
cell phone company is only time Sony misses an opportunity for blatant product
placement. Early in the journey there’s
a four minute “adventure” in the kid’s Candy Crush Saga app, showcasing the
special levels you can actually play on your phone after the movie. (Just a heads up, the levels are easy enough
for the kid kicking your seat to beat on the first try.) The next significant scene takes place in the
Just Dance game app. Before the movie
ends, there are would-be touching scenes or should-be amusing gags involving
Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter & Spotify. The Emoji Movie using the Seltzer/Friedberg
method of hoping to produce laughs: humor by association. Director/co-writer Tony Leondis (Igor) thinks
that because you recognize familiar things you’ll laugh. Apart from from those gags, The Emoji Movie
also features forced & lame Dad Jokes & puns featuring cameos from all
your favorite Emojis.

The movie
gets really tiresome really quick. Leading
the charge is Smiler, who is as conniving as a dead parrot. She has not master plan; her whole objective
is to keep the Emojis as a well oiled machine.
This lack of intrigue makes the finale all the more boring.

The Emoji
Movie is cheap so-called entertainment featuring bad voiceover work, a stolen concept
& exactly one laugh. The movie does
accomplish one thing: It answers the question “Is there such thing as too much
James Corden?” The answer is yes.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

As the end
credits rolled on Dunkirk, I sat there in shock & had to hold back
tears. I’ve cried in movies before but
this time felt different. Tears came not
because I was attached to the characters & their journey ending like with
Return of the King or Toy Story 3. Nor
did I cry tears of joy because what just transpired onscreen was so magical like
the Define Dancing sequence in Wall•E or Spotlight as a whole. Instead, it was profound sadness that I didn’t
feel the joy & the awe the rest of the audience felt as they left. Not even close.

On the
shores of Dunkirk, we meet Tommy (Whitehead), a British private who survives
shooting in the streets of town, & the mysterious Gibson (Barnard) in their
desperate attempt to escape the beach.
On the sea, we follow Mr. Dawson (Rylance), his son Peter (Glynn-Carney)
and their young crewman George (Keoghan) aboard Moonstone on their journey to
Dunkirk to assist in the rescue effort.
In the air, three RAF pilots, led by Farrier (Hardy), are in charge of
providing air cover for the retreating Allied forces.

As I walked
out of the theatre into the lobby & finally to my car, I staggered,
tripping over the carpet, dazed. I
honestly couldn’t believe what I had just watched. Essentially, I watched Christopher Nolan, who
has made such wonderful works as The Prestige & Inception, try to create
his own version of Alfonzo Cuaron’s Gravity.
Instead of one grand character to root for, Nolan - who also wrote the
screenplay- has created almost a dozen minor characters with no discernible characteristics
or full names. For instance, the two soldiers
on the ground spend most of the movie running from boat to boat, trying to
escape only to have every single ship blow up in their faces. After the third different boat explodes
without a discussion as to who these soldiers are, one might check out.

The movie
also intercuts scenes of the crew of the Moonstone sailing. Then sailing some more. Then picking up Shivering Sailor (that is
literally his name in the end credits) before sailing towards Dunkirk some more,
against Shivering’s objections. During
these scenes, Sailor does exactly one thing of that can be considered a
relevant action that is so despicable towards another character that you feel
zero sympathy for him, despite the fact that he is supposed to represent the
thousands of shell shocked soldiers of Dunkirk.
But the worst of this subplot occurs at the end when Nolan allows
Shivering to get away with it without consequence.

There are
two characters that have the ability to hold the interest of the audience. The first is Farrier, who you feel actually
believes in his mission, in the soldiers on the shore & in his fellow
pilots. The second appears in one scene
in the final five minutes that is so heartbreakingly beautiful that I don’t
dare spoil it here.

But what I
will spoil is the defining moment where I knew for absolute certain that Dunkirk
was Nolan making his own, simpler version of Gravity. At the end of the movie, one of the leads is
reading Churchill’s We Shall Fight on the
Beaches speech from the newspaper as a closing voiceover. During the speech, we see Farrier attempting
to land the plane on a now-deserted Dunkirk beach as he runs out of fuel. (Oh…SPOILER
ALERT: most of the soldiers are rescued.
Sorry about that.) During this, the plane’s landing gear fails to
deploy, forcing Farrier to manually pump the wheels out before he loses altitude. This final scene shows that Nolan wasn’t
looking to make any sort of deep movie about the fragility of man or the
despair of war. He wanted to make a
simple, crowdpleasing thriller that played ticketbuyers’ eyes & ears instead
of their hearts & minds.

In the real
Miracle of Dunkirk, the British Navy, along with hundreds of private seacrafts,
evacuated almost 350 thousand soldiers over an eight day stretch after the
Allies were defeated in an early battle in World War II. In the newest feature from acclaimed
filmmaker Christopher Nolan, he uses the events of Dunkirk to create a dazzlingly
empty suspense picture that features set piece after set piece with
occasionally grand visuals, spectacular noise that one might call sound effects
& bland, literally nameless characters.
It was a miracle I didn’t cry.

Contributor: Movie Rehab

About Me

Twitter: @almostflmcritic
Contributor @ MovieRehab.com
I just your normal, married, 9-to-5'er trying to to make ends meet. I have two weaknesses: low-stakes forms of gambling and movies (in case you can't tell). My wife set up this blog to fully embrace my love for great movies of then, now & the future.